The Nobel Prize as a Reward Mechanism in the Genomics Era: Anonymous Researchers, Visible Managers and the Ethics of Excellence

The Human Genome Project (HGP) is regarded by many as one of the major scientific achievements in recent science history, a large-scale endeavour that is changing the way in which biomedical research is done and expected, moreover, to yield considerable benefit for society. Thus, since the completion of the human genome sequencing effort, a debate has emerged over the question whether this effort merits to be awarded a Nobel Prize and if so, who should be the one(s) to receive it, as (according to current procedures) no more than three individuals can be selected. In this article, the HGP is taken as a case study to consider the ethical question to what extent it is still possible, in an era of big science, of large-scale consortia and global team work, to acknowledge and reward individual contributions to important breakthroughs in biomedical fields. Is it still viable to single out individuals for their decisive contributions in order to reward them in a fair and convincing way? Whereas the concept of the Nobel prize as such seems to reflect an archetypical view of scientists as solitary researchers who, at a certain point in their careers, make their one decisive discovery, this vision has proven to be problematic from the very outset. Already during the first decade of the Nobel era, Ivan Pavlov was denied the Prize several times before finally receiving it, on the basis of the argument that he had been active as a research manager (a designer and supervisor of research projects) rather than as a researcher himself. The question then is whether, in the case of the HGP, a research effort that involved the contributions of hundreds or even thousands of researchers worldwide, it is still possible to “individualise” the Prize? The “HGP Nobel Prize problem” is regarded as an exemplary issue in current research ethics, highlighting a number of quandaries and trends involved in contemporary life science research practices more broadly

Staging the Scientist: The Representation of Science and its Processes in American and British Drama

Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estudos Ingleses e Norte AmericanosThe aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that drama, performance and science are naturally interconnected. Various plays introduce science into their dramatic content, structure and performance by means of different dramaturgical strategies, and the objective of this dissertation is to present this diversification of science plays. In this dissertation I discuss three different representational strategies of science in recent American and English plays. My corpus includes: Copenhagen (1998) by Michael Frayn, Photograph 51 (2008) by Ana Ziegler, and Mnemonic (1999) devised by Complicite company, and conceived and directed by Simon McBurney. Copenhagen is a metatheatrical play that demonstrates complicated science in an attractive and accessible way for the audience/readers. It tells a story about Heisenberg, Bohr and his wife Margrethe who meet after their death in the vague, spirit world to talk about what happened in Copenhagen in 1941. Photograph 51 stages the competition between four prominent scientists to discover the double helix of DNA structure, and it captures the psychological portrait of Rosalind Franklin, who contributed greatly to the DNA structure discovery. Mnemonic is the “alternative” or “postdramatic” science play that stages two parallel stories: The journey of Welsh-Lithuanian Alice, a contemporary woman, who mysteriously left her boyfriend Virgil to look for her never seen father in Eastern Europe; and the 1991 discovery of the Iceman, a frozen body found in the Northern Italian Alps that thought to be more than five thousand years old. These two stories function within a third, bigger narrative, which is about private and cultural recollections. The analyses of these science plays are based on the common research questions: How are science, scientific process or scientist presented in the plays? What is the role of this representation? How do the plays rework conventional paradigms of perception of science and how do they reveal the nature of the scientific process? How are real facts transformed in the plays? What is the role of this transformation? What is the nature of performance in each play and how it is related to the dramatic content? Is the scientist the tragic hero and if so, what is the tragic conflict? And finally what is the structure of the play, what literary conventions does each play rework and what dramaturgical strategies and choices they operate

“On the ruins of seriality”:The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific life

Twenty-first-century discourse on science has been marked by narratives of crisis. Science is said to be experiencing crises of public trust, of peer review and publishing, of reproducibility and replicability, and of recognition and reward. The dominant response has been to “repair” the scientific literature and the system of scientific publishing through open science. This paper places the current predicament of scholarly communication in historical perspective by exploring the evolution of the scientific journal in the second half of the twentieth century. I focus on a new genre of scientific journal invented by Dutch commercial publishers shortly after World War II, and on its effects on the nature of the scientific life. I show that profit-oriented publishers and discipline-building scientists worked together to make postwar science more open, while also arguing that formats of scientific publication have their own agency.</p

Historical short stories as nature of science instruction in secondary science classrooms: Science teachers\u27 implementation and students\u27 reactions

This study explores the use of historical short stories as nature of science (NOS) instruction in thirteen secondary science classes. The stories focus on the development of science ideas and include statements and questions to draw students\u27 and teachers\u27 attention to key NOS ideas and misconceptions. This study used mixed methods to examine how teachers implement the stories, factors influencing teachers\u27 implementation, the impact on students\u27 NOS understanding, students\u27 interest in the stories and factors correlated with their interest. Teachers\u27 implementation decisions were influenced by their NOS understanding, curricula, time constraints, perceptions of student ability and resistance, and student goals. Teachers implementing stories at a high-level of effectiveness were more likely to make instructional decisions to mitigate constraints from the school environment and students. High-level implementers frequently referred to their learning goals for students as a rationale for implementing the stories even when facing constraints. Teachers implementing at a low-level of effectiveness were more likely to express that constraints inhibited effective implementation. Teachers at all levels of implementation expressed concern regarding the length of the stories and time required to fully implement the stories. Additionally, teachers at all levels of implementation expressed a desire for additional resources regarding effective story implementation and reading strategies. Evidence exists that the stories can be used to improve students\u27 NOS understanding. However, under what conditions the stories are effective is still unclear. Students reported finding the stories more interesting than textbook readings and many students enjoyed learning about scientists and the development of science idea. Students\u27 interest in the stories is correlated with their attitudes towards reading, views of effective science learning, attributions of academic success, and interest in a science-related career. If NOS instructional materials are to be used effectively, designers must take into account the needs of classroom teachers by limiting the length of the materials and providing additional teacher support resources. Many teachers will likely require professional development opportunities to build their NOS understanding, develop a compelling rationale for teaching NOS and using the stories, observe modeling of effective implementation, and collaborate with other teachers regarding how to mitigate constraints